There is no kitchen here, no floor either. These vital parts of our home should have been installed last Monday and Tuesday but the kitchen is still echoing when sound bounces off bare walls and the cement slab. Nothing has been done.

The workers arrived last Monday, ripped up the old floor and discovered water under it. Work stopped while we had a dehumidifier dry out the slab. The slab dried and the workers returned on Thursday to lay the floor. Worked stopped immediately when they discovered the new floor boards were too big to fit into the ones still on our lounge room floor. They contacted the insurance assessor and were told to wait until the insurance company gave approval to have the entire floor done. We got that approval late yesterday. Now we have to try to fit into the schedules of both the floor and kitchen people. We also have to move everything out of the lounge room, which includes moving my computer. Sigh.

It's been an interesting week. Hanno has set up a makeshift kitchen for me where we have a pottery crock full of filtered water, a camp stove, electric frypan, toaster, electric kettle and a bucket. The microwave and fridge are in the lounge room, I'm washing my hands and washing up in the laundry, all the non-refrigerated food is in one of the bedrooms. We've been eating bread from the baker but I've made our other meals here, apart from a cheap vegetarian pizza last Tuesday.

Glass jars can be reused many times for your jams. New lids can be purchased when the seal goes.

Choose your packaging carefully when you are buying groceries. It’s great to recycle and reuse plastics but it’s much better to reduce the amount of plastic you buy in the first place.

If you buy those plastic sauce dispensers, buy one, then buy a bulk pack of sauce and keep refilling the dispenser, ditto with mustard. The same goes for those plastic bottles of water. When the bottle is empty, refill it instead of buying a new one. Naturally you’ll need to wash it every day. Cleaning chemicals often come packaged in plastic. There are more natural ways of cleaning your home, look here to find some I use. Even when a product looks like it’s in a plain cardboard box, the box is often coated in wax or a thin plastic to make it watertight. Just scrape the box with your fingernail and if you have anything come off under your nail, it’s probably been waxed. Milk and juice cartons are made from a product called Liquidpaperboard, which is a mix of paper, aluminium foil and plastic. When you recycle these cartons they are made into office paper.

Speaking of paper, that is one of the materials that must be recycled, either in your own garden, compost or worm farm, or at the recycle depot. If you add paper to your household waste bin, it will go to land fill and as it breaks down it will add significantly to the methane gas that’s emitted from your local tip. Methane is one of the most harmful greenhouse gases. Paper is easily recycled and uses 90% less water and 50% less energy than paper made from trees.

There are patterns for crocheted shopping totes here or here or a fabric one here. The bags below are the net bags I use when buying vegetables, nuts and fruit. They are just a piece of tulle or netting, sewn along three sides and hemmed at the top. Simple! One of my readers has just alerted me to her home business that makes a similar fruit and vegie bag, here is the link for online sales. Thanks Rebecca.

Buying butter in paper wrappers instead of a plastic tub is the way to go. If you buy bread, buy it from a local baker and ask that they wrap the bread in tissue or a brown paper bag. Or take your basket with you with a clean tea towel and wrap that around your bread. Better still, make your own bread. You'll be able to buy your flour in bulk heavy paper bags with a string closure.

If you’re serious about the amount of packaging and waste you throw out, it would be a good idea to sit for a while and work out a waste reduction and recycling program for yourself. I did this a few years ago and now our bin generally contains only a very small amount of waste. Give your food scraps and peelings to your compost, chooks or worms, and you’ll be cutting back on a lot of waste. Newspapers, cardboard, old telephone books etc can all be composted or shredded and used for the chooks or in compost. If you cut back on the amount of plastic you buy, you’ll be on the road to making a valuable contribution to your planet. It really is easy to do this, it only requires a bit of thought and determination to carry it through.

Yes, it's the second post today but I wanted to write about a few additional things.

There are a few blogs I want to recommend you read. The first is Julie's. Julie has been going back to basics and writing about it every day for the past month. It's very interesting and definitely worth reading.

Kim is following the rigorous Riot for Austerity 90% reduction and doing well. Read about her efforts here, and the very interesting recounting of her day on her home page.

Melinda at Elements in Time is grappling with the difficulties of her extended family's continuing consumerist lifestyle. She writes an insightful post about it on her blog and there are photos of a Thanksgiving dinner there which, to an Australian, were very interesting.

Debt, what a rotten word. Yet it’s what most of us have to sign up to, live with and work through if we are to own our own home. Let me say first that I know there are many ways to pay off debt. I’m writing about what worked well for Hanno and I. This is what I have experience in. Other methods may work equally as well but as I have no experience of other ways, I can't write about them.

As I said in the previous post, we paid off our mortgage in eight years. It was not easy, few things that are really worthwhile are ever easy, but we decided on our plan and we stuck to it. Yes we fell of the wagon a couple of times, but when we did, we got right back on and knuckled down again. We also had a healthy deposit when we bought our house.

If you’re thinking of buying a house, don’t wait until you buy it to start putting money aside. Work out how much you can realistically and consistently pay off a mortgage, and from that moment on, start putting that amount aside. While you’re looking around for your home, this money will be building up and when it comes time to pay your deposit, your nest egg is there. Add it to your deposit. Once you’re locked into the mortgage, pay as much as you can each month. Make extra payments if you’re able to.

If you have credit card debt, and have debt on a few cards, I like the snowball method of paying them off. First you make a list of your credit card debt, from the smallest to the largest debt. Then, before you pay anything from the debts, you save an emergency fund of between $500 - $1000 to provide a safety net in case something happens that you need money for. This will allow you to use your emergency fund instead of your credit cards in an emergency.

When you snowball debt, you pay off the smallest debt first, while continuing to pay the minimum payment on your other cards. When the lowest debt is paid off, you go to the second lowest debt and do the same thing. When you pay off the second card, you'll have more money for your payment because you'll have paid off one card, so you use that money to increase your payment on the second card, and so on, until you've paid them all off. Always pay the minimum payment on your other cards.

Be careful of temptation while you're in your period of debt reduction. The bank will write to you offering to increase your credit limit - they say this is your reward for being an excellent customer and for paying off your debts so well, but in reality it's to trap you in ever increasing debt that they reap huge rewards from. It is not in the bank's interest for you to be debt-free. So when they write you that letter telling you that your limit is increased, write back and say you want to decrease your credit limit. Decrease it so you don't face temptation.

When you have your cards paid off you should keep ONE of them. That one card should have zero balance and a limit of about $500. This is what Hanno and I have now, we have had this card for many years, we rarely use it, but it's there, just in case. We find that paying for things with cash, feels like we are really spending money, whereas buying with a credit card doesn't. There is nothing like the feeling of handing over a couple of $50 notes to let you know you're really spending, and to be careful.

Now, this is the bit that I really wanted to share with you.

When you pay off your debt you have to be strong. It will be very easy to go the other way, say it doesn't matter, or your best friend has a new dress and you should have one too, or the car needs new tyres NOW. Don't betray yourself. Stay true to what you want to do. Stay on the path you've planned out and don't keep spending. If you do need a new dress or new tyres, then they should be saved up for, not whacked on the credit card. Please don't betray yourself. That is what you'll be doing if you keep spending.

I firmly believe that Hanno and I have such a strong marriage because together we decided what our shared values were and we worked as a team for what we wanted. Debt reduction was part of that. We decided that our days of being screwed by the bank were over, we wanted to be free of debt and the weight of carrying that debt around with us every day. Together we listed our debts, together we planned our escape from debt and together we worked towards it. It helped build our marriage because we were working towards a common goal and when we saw each other making the sacrifices necessary for our success that built into our marriage a feeling of pride, security and strength.

I can't tell you what it will take for you to pay off your debt, but if it's giving up your Saturday shopping sprees, selling your decluttered household items on ebay or cutting back on your spiralling grocery bill, do it; do whatever it takes. You and I both know it won't be easy but whatever pain, inconvenience or anxiety it causes will be forgotten when you come out the other end and live debt-free. Having no debt will give you freedom to live the way you want to live. So what's stopping you? Be brave, take a deep breath and dive in.

I had a lovely email from a reader today, an ex-New Yorker who has moved to PA. She's a writer and a contributor to the book Get Satisfied: How Twenty People Like You Found the Satisfaction of Enough. Apparently it's been very popular and is going to be made into a documentary. I checked it out on Amazon and it looks like a very interesting read. I've added it to my Amazon favourites.

Don't forget your aprons ladies. The swap deadline is next week, November 28. All aprons must be posted on or before that day.

I haven't been able to post about my kitchen yet. Let me just say that work has stopped and we have no kitchen. I'll update you when I can write about it without sounding like a mad woman.

Our six monthly water bill arrived yesterday. It was $44.85, with our discount we have to pay $40.36. We've worked hard to reduce our water consumption and as the price of water has been rising - from 78 cents/kilolitre in 2002 when our bill was $248.20; 78 cents in 2004 when our bill was $148.20; 95 cents/kl in 2006 when our bill was $101.65 to 115 cents/kl now when our bill is $44.85, we have been using less and getting the most out of every drop. We've done a similar thing with our electricity bill.

There are choices to be made when you decide to live simply and reduce your impact on the world. One of the choices we made was that reducing our use of water and electricity was something we could achieve that would make a different to our greenhouse gas emissions and to the amount we paid for our utilities. We worked on one thing but got two rewards for the work we put in. In many ways being frugal is being green.

We did a similar thing when we decided to get rid of our debt. We paid off our house in eight years. We did that by first making the conscious decision to do it, we made a plan on how we'd do it, then we did it. That last part was the most difficult. ; ) It's easy looking at something and knowing you need to work on it; making a plan is pretty easy too, but the doing of it. Well, that takes effort, perseverance and determination.

One of the things we planned for when we started on this path of debt reduction was to not worry about what our family, friends and neighbours thought. We had to have enough confidence to know, really know right down to our bones, that what we were doing was right for us. It might not have been right for our neighbours, or our friends, but for us, it was right - it would make our lives better. I'm not going to tell you it was easy, because sometimes it wasn't, but as we got into it and we saw our debt reducing every week, instead of going up or stagnating, it replaced the feelings of deprivation we sometimes felt when we decided against buying tickets for a concert, going out to dinner or going on holiday, with something better - we felt the taste of freedom.

Being in debt restricts you. It makes you play by someone else's rules. You have to work enough so you have the money to pay up every month. And the really horrible thing about having a mortgage or credit card debt is that often when you make a payment, you don't reduce the debt - or you only reduce it by a small fraction - often you're just paying interest to a bank.

But the purpose of this post is not to remind you of your mortgage or credit card bills, but to show you, by example, that reducing debt isn't just about your large bills. You can reduce your debt by cutting back on your consumption of water, electricity, gas, petrol and your phone. When you pay less for all these things, not only will you reduce your footprint on the earth, you'll also have more money to pay off your mortgage and credit cards. And, ladies and gentlemen, I guarantee that the day you pay off your mortgage will be a day you'll remember for a long time. There is such a feeling of relief and freedom that you'll be smiling all the way to the bank to finalise your account.

Tomorrow I'll write about ways to pay off debt.

It's Thanksgiving Day in America today so I'd like to wish my American friends happy Thanksgiving. I hope you all have a wonderful day with family and friends.

I was asked in comments and emails how to brew a good pot of tea, and thought it was an excellent idea for a post.

Tea is the second most popular drink in the world. Water is the most popular. Like most people, I've been drinking tea made with tea bags - I found a well priced organic black tea bag at Aldi and have been using that. But over the past couple of months I've gone back to real tea, and I say 'real tea' because tea bags are made with the fannings (the worst grade of tea) and tea dust. There is such a difference in the taste that I know if you've only used tea bags, tea made with loose leaves will convert you to making tea in a pot.

You'll need fresh water, a kettle, a china, glass or pottery tea pot, tea leaves, a tea cosy (if you're in a cold climate), tea strainer or tea ball (to stop the leaves going into your cup), and ...

Time. After your water is boiled, it will take about five minutes to make a pot of tea.

You must have fresh water from the tap to make good tea. Tea needs dissolved oxygen in the water and if you use water that's been sitting in the kettle for a while, that's not good enough.

While I'm sure there are many ways to make a good pot of tea, this is how I make it:

I have my tea black with one spoon of honey. MMmmmmmm. Please don't flavour your tea too much, it masks the true flavour of good tea. All those vanilla, apple, apricot and strawberry teas, aren't the types of tea I'm talking about here. They are tea bags made with fannings and with (usually) artificial flavourings added. If you want to drink good tea for flavour and health, you'll choose a good quality loose tea, have it black or with milk and with sweetener or without. That's it.

TYPES OF TEA
All tea comes from the plant Camellia sinensis. After the tea is picked, it is processed in various ways to produce the different teas we drink. Tea is generally named for the region it originates from.

Green tea: Tea that is dried immediately after harvesting.

Black tea: Tea that is dried and fermented, it's stronger than green tea. Black tea comes in various strengths and flavours. There is Darjeeling (my favourite), Orange Pekoe (which not orange flavoured), Earl Grey (black tea with bergamot oil added), Ceylon tea (for my fellow Australians, this is the tea that is sold as Billy Tea, Lan Choo, Bushells, King Tea etc.) Ceylon tea is my everyday cuppa.

TEA COSIES
You'll need a tea cosy if you live in a cold climate.
Tea cosy patterns here and here, Australian 1930s crocheted tea cosy and a vintage tea cosy. I wanted to show you my favourite tea cosy that Tricia made for me, a patchwork one, but I can't find it with everything packed away for the renovations. I'll try to remember it when everything is back to normal.

We survived another day without a kitchen, and with cupboards and appliances sitting on the back verandah. Actually it hasn't been too bad and the only thing I'm really missing is my filtered water tap. There is water in the tap but I never drink our unfiltered tap water. I thought we were preparing for two days without the filter, and filled the pottery crock Tricia gave me before the taps were removed. It's now less than half full. I thought we were pretty good with our water but let me tell you we are being even more thrifty with it now. We are pouring the remains in the water bottles into the electric jug and drinking full glasses of water; no drinking water is being thrown on the garden, into pot plants or down the drain. It has shown me that no matter how much you monitor your usage in a normal day, there is always room for improvement. I don't have to work today so later in the morning I'm going to boil some rainwater from the tank and add that to the crock.

When you think about it, you can cut back on the length of showers, turn off the tap when you brush your teeth, do less washing in an energy and water efficient washing machine, but you can't cut back on the amount of water you drink. We always try for two litres each a day, plus what we drink in our tea. So I guess we need about six litres of drinking water a day. While I was at work, I drank the spring water that's at the Centre. I also filled up my water bottle before I came home, but that's all gone now and soon we'll be relying on our rainwater to keep us healthy and hydrated.

This is another instance where something unexpected happened and what we have stored here has seen us through. I think it was Lisa who asked recently about stockpiling water. Here is your answer, Lisa. It's essential.

I prepared enough food for two days without the kitchen. Today is day three. I'll have to come up with something for us to eat today and tomorrow and although I have no doubt we'll eat well, I know I'll have trouble finding everything I need. That is another lesson learned - pack a box of easy to prepare foods, no matter now quickly you think everything will return to normal. Oh well, I'm sure we'll survive. At least we have food in the house, which is more than millions of people throughout the world can say. Lis and Christine suggested a post about what we're eating this week so when the kitchen is back and everything is back to normal, I'll write about it.

Thank you for stopping by today and welcome all the new people who are reading my blog.